EMF 5: U.S. Oil and Gas Supply

Future rates of U.S. oil and natural gas supply are among the most important concerns of this nation’s domestic and foreign policymakers.  The high priority placed on oil and gas supply issues have sparked politicized debates on price controls, windfall profits taxes, federal lease rates, and similar legislation.  Those debates have been dominated by efficiency, equity, and environmental considerations, highlighting the need for credible projections of domestic production under alternative policy assumptions.   Projections from formal mathematical models have often enlightened, but sometimes confused, the debates on U.S. oil and gas supply issues.  The present study tries to put the contribution formal models can make to the debates on U.S. oil and gas issues in perspective by: (1) analyzing comparative results from a number of models under common input assumptions; and (2) using that comparison and ancillary analyses to help assess how models can and should be used in the future.